An increasing number of children are being diagnosed with diabetes for the past three or four months, paediatricians have said.
The doctors are not yet drawing a direct relation between the spurt in diabetes among children and Covid infection, but the sudden jump in the numbers is raising a suspicion that the two could be linked.
Most children are not tested for Covid because they remain asymptomatic, said paediatrician Apurba Ghosh. “Classical symptoms of Covid might not have manifested in these children, so the parents did not make them undergo the test,” he said.
Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes are being seen in children but the incidence of type 1, also known as juvenile diabetes, is more.
Ghosh said these children will have to take medicines for the rest of their lives.
“There has been a 30 per cent increase in diabetes cases among children. This has been happening since a few months after the second wave (of Covid infections) last year,” said Ghosh, who is also director of the Institute of Child Health.
“This sudden rise in diabetes among children is a cause of worry. Whether it has a direct correlation with the children being infected with Covid has to be studied.”
Diabetes is a disease that causes the level of blood glucose or blood sugar to increase. It occurs when the pancreas cannot produce insulin or the human body becomes resistant to the insulin it produces.
Mihir Sarkar, a professor of paediatrics at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, said the children being diagnosed with diabetes are aged 7 or more. “The common symptoms among the children are weight loss and frequent urination. The weight loss happens along with the children becoming hungry very quickly. The children also feel thirsty and drink water frequently,” he said.
A general feeling of weakness and fatigue is another common symptom.
Ghosh and Sarkar both said a direct correlation between increased incidence of diabetes among children and Covid has been established in the US.
The Institute of Child Health and the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital both have admitted children diagnosed with diabetes in the last few weeks. “It is not that children did not have diabetes before, but the number of such children is rising,” said a doctor.
One possible explanation for the rise in cases could be that the receptor that the spike protein of the novel coronavirus targets to enter the lungs are present in the pancreas, too, said endocrinologist Subhankar Chowdhury.
“This receptor is also present in the beta cells of the pancreas. It could be that the virus is impacting the pancreas, too,” said Chowdhury, who heads the endocrinology department at SSKM Hospital.
The children are made to undergo a blood test to know the glucose level. If the level is higher than normal in two consecutive tests, the child is considered diabetic.
